Les Paul, the 90-year-old guitarist who pioneered the solid-body electric guitar, is releasing his first-ever rock n’ roll album. I know a lot of people are like, “so what? hes a geezer. dumb post,” but Les Paul developed a lot of modern studio techniques, like multi-tracking and echo delay. This quote from the MSNBC article really struck me:

Paul acknowledges that he can no longer play the way he did at his peak. Arthritis has gnarled his fingers and he has needed a hearing aid since a friend playfully cuffed his ear and broke an eardrum back in 1970. He has taken to heart the advice given to him by a nurse who showed up shortly after he started playing at New York?s Iridium Jazz Club in 1996.

“She said, ‘Don?t make the mistake of trying to play like you did when you were a kid, you?re never going to do it, so play like you play now,’” Paul remembers. “All these guys … play so fast, but the guy that wins is the guy that plays the melody and reaches the heart.”

You can tell he’s from country/jazz and not rock since he’s aging gracefully. No disrespect to David Byrne, of course.